Quotes from Jeff Long

Children were brought to see him. His legend spread quickly. Wherever he went, it was known that this was a holy man, captured with small houses of souls around his neck.

ONE DISCOVERY It is easy to go down into Hell Ã¢â'¬Â¦; but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air—there's the rub.… —VIRGIL, Aeneid

Their storytelling grew richer. One evening, Ali was consumed by a memory. She saw three ripe lemons on the wooden cutting board in her mother's kitchen, right down to the sunlight spangling off their pores. She heard her mother singing while they rolled pie dough in a storm of flour.

Surrounded by enemies, there were officially no enemies for them. With civilization at large trickling down shitholes like Mogadishu and Kigali and Port-au-Prince, the "new" Army was under strict orders: Thou shalt have no enemy. No casualties. No turf. You occupied high ground only long enough to let the politicos rattle sabers and get reelected, and then you moved on to the next bad place. The landscape changed; the hatreds did not.

Life's too short for doubt, and yet too long for faith.

Oh, they told me everything. About their families and crops, their animals, their failures and triumphs, the weather, their first time with a woman, how many shekels or denarii their neighbors still owed them or they owed their neighbors. What a blessing it was when a cloud crossed the sun. They talked about weakness and temptation and evil. And they talked about their hopes.

What a remarkable conceit civilization is

Hush," said January. "We may be old, but we're not silly. Satan is a catchall term. It gives identity to our theory of a centralized leadership. Call him what you want, a maximum leader, a caudillo. A Genghis Khan or Sitting Bull. Or a council of wise men, or warlords. The concept is sound. Logical.